[March 11, 2014]UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) — The
number of children affected by the civil war in Syria has more than
doubled over the past year, with hundreds of thousands of young Syrians
trapped in besieged parts of the country, the United Nations Children's
Fund said on Monday.

"After three years of conflict and turmoil, Syria is now one of
the most dangerous places on earth to be a child," said the UNICEF
report. "In their thousands, children have lost lives and limbs,
along with virtually every aspect of their childhood."

"They have lost classrooms and teachers, brothers and sisters,
friends, caregivers, homes and stability," it said. "Instead of
learning and playing, many have been forced into the workplace, are
being recruited to fight, or subjected to enforced idleness."

UNICEF said the child casualty rates were the highest recorded in
any recent conflict in the region. It cited U.N. figures that at
least 10,000 children have been killed in the Syrian war but noted
that the real number is probably higher.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said that
more than 136,000 have been killed since a revolt against President
Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011.

"The dangers for children go beyond death and injury," UNICEF said.
"Boys as young as 12 have been recruited to support the fighting,
some in actual combat, others to work as informers, guards, or arms
smugglers."

The UNICEF report said 2 million children needed some form of
psychological support or treatment while a total of 5.5 million
children were affected by the conflict — some of them inside Syria
and others living abroad as refugees.

This is more than twice the number of children affected by the
conflict in March 2013, when UNICEF estimated it had impacted 2.3
million young Syrians.

The number of children displaced inside Syria has risen to nearly 3
million from 920,000 a year ago. Meanwhile, UNICEF said the number
of child refugees has grown to 1.2 million from 260,000 since last
year — 425,000 of them under 5 years old.

"The decline in Syrian children's access to education has been
staggering," the report said. "Today, nearly 3 million children in
Syria and in neighboring countries are unable to go to school on a
regular basis. That's about half of Syria's school-age population."

UNICEF said there were 323,000 children under 5 years of age in
besieged or areas that are hard for humanitarian aid workers to
access.

The UNICEF report comes after Save the Children, an international
advocacy group that promotes children's rights, issued an assessment
of Syria's collapsing healthcare system.

The UNICEF report said Syrian children are being been forced to grow
up faster than any child should — one in 10 Syrian refugee children
is now working while one in every five Syrian girls in Jordan is
forced into early marriage.

"This war has to end so that children can return to their homes to
rebuild their lives in safety with their family and friends," said
UNICEF director Anthony Lake. "This third devastating year for
Syrian children must be the last."